Well, about a week ago I wanted to listen to some Internet radio on RealPlayer to get my news. The program worked fine for the most part, but it did have a few annoying bugs. So when, upon opening, the program asked me if I wanted to download the 84K download I clicked OK, hoping that that might fix a few of the bugs.
Well, it didn’t.
Instead, it froze my computer which would no longer recognize my hard drive. After a few days without my computer, I was able to attain the necessary equipment to get my computer booted back up. Unfortunately, that meant I needed to initialize my hard drive, basically erase every last bit of information that was once stored on it.
So I had to start all over installing software. Some of my programs I will never see again because the installation CDs are either lost or damaged (including my beloved Civilization II sob). All of my non-application files are destroyed, including the web page that was almost ready to go online and my entire mp3 collection.
I hate Real Audio more than I hate Real Player. Whenever I want to download a song I don’t want to use their shitty program to play it. I don’t even download music illegally. I only download live unreleased recordings from bands that allow taping, and I really wonder why the otherwise very cool individuals who run the sites that allow me to download a good deal of this music, must force me to use an inferior form of audio compression that I can’t figure out how to decode to wav and burn to cd.
Actually now that I think about it, everything Real makes sucks.
For what it’s worth I had a lot of problems with Real player until I upgraded to Real One. It works just fine and I’ve got about 4 gigs of music on it. I ran adaware and as far I can tell there was no spyware there that originated with real player. Now Kazaa, bear share and others (bonzai buddy being one of the worst) all install spyware stuff along with the goods.
One caveat: I did not allow the other supplemental programs to be installed when I loaded BearShare onto my system. More than likely, that’s where they’re found.
I’ll never understand how Real stays in business. They have a horrible product, with multiple free alternatives that are miles better, and yet they somehow soldier on. When I finally got RealPlayer scraped out of my computer (a young priest and an old priest were needed) I forbade the wife from ever installing it again. (And myself as well.)
There isn’t a single media clip in the world that will get me to install RealPlayer again.
Real One is, I’ve discovered, quite nice - I’ve been in the (slow) process of ripping my entire CD collection in anticipation of a soon-arriving (I hope) Nomad Jukebox 3. There are a few hiccups now and then, but nothing serious and the result is a beautifully organized 1700 files and counting. My Win XP seems resigned to the situation.
One more vote here that RP sucks big time. In about a month I plan on getting a new system and there’s no way in the world I am installing that piece of crap with associated spyware.
I hope some Islamic fundamentialist group places a large amount of money for the head of the inventor of that pathetic excuse for a music player that is RealPlayer.